NORMAN MAILER
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we must resist (but leaves us spineless with the knowledge we have not
a clue how to proceed) becomes instead the very action of the book , as
if totalitarianism has been here so well perceived that we grapple with
the beast, smell it, feel its depredations on our power to resist , and
even begin to resist it . Some vision begins to move in one 's mind , some
grasp of the modern forms of despotism, some sense of that bureau–
cratic organism as a malignancy, an incubus upon our century which
will finally , unlike all earlier historical forms of tyranny , end by
destroying even its own . " The City rarely misses devouring its servants,
and is it not , among your kind, the supreme form of belonging to have
yourselves devoured?" For it is in Malaquais ' vision that the total state
does not strike at our liberties but rather is out to dissolve our identities.
" Unfortunately we are strictly forbidden to reveal any address ,
under any pretext . No, sir, not even as an exception. Anyway , in
this department we do not know the addresses of our subscribers .
A special department takes charge of that , entirely independent
of ours. "
, 'What department , madam? Perhaps by going there . . . ."
" The Department of Archives , sir. But no one knows where
it is. "
If these bureaucrats will end by devouring one another, it is
because they do not even possess the human if conspiratorial purpose
to
serve as tyrants, no, they form no master ring, but rather are agents
of
entropy who pull in all identity upon themselves (which is to say in
upon the Program) until there is no identity left to dissolve but their
own. "Dominique," says Javelin, "there is no individual fate in
Hell. "
So in Malaquais ' story of a man who comes home to his anony–
mous apartment in an anonymous complex of high-rise buildings and
finds that it is no longer anonymous because he cannot even find it nor
find his wife nor his furniture, nor a lock for his key, we are brought
into ironic contact with a modern epic, with what we may fear is the
only modern epic-the simple search for that identity we all feel dis–
appearing into some great maw of our century, into some almost
palpable and most willful intent which seems to be forever engorging
our roots and washing us faster away from any recognition of the past.
It is Malaquais' vision
to
see that bureaucracy is not stupidity but a
veritable system of evil genius.
